


The Autumn Child

by frostycoins



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Geisha, IwaOi is on the way kids, M/M, More ships will be added!, Showa Era Japan, fishermen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-14
Updated: 2017-03-14
Packaged: 2018-10-05 05:52:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10299071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frostycoins/pseuds/frostycoins
Summary: (DISCONTINUED) At night, Akaashi sneaks into the teahouse and becomes a geisha. In the morning, Bokuto sails into the morning sun.Set in a small village in the Showa era."The atmosphere was burdened with the secrets of two strangers whose worlds had begun to collide."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone! This is my very first work I've ever published. I'm so self-conscious but well, it's written and now it's out there. The story is inspired by Shouwa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu. The Showa era really got me hooked, it feels like a whole different world. I did a lot of research but of course, since I'm just a tiny German person somewhere far, far away from Showa Era Japan, I can't guarantee this depiction is anything close to reality. With that said, I hope you enjoy whatever happens within the next 4210 words.  
> (Look at this tweet to get in the right mood: https://twitter.com/beaucoutau/status/841775872248020993)

They must be goddesses. They carry themselves with dignity. Every move they make – subtle and controlled – tells a story. They're beautiful that way, it takes your breath away. You wonder, how can someone be so pristine?

 

* * *

 

“ _My my, are you watching again?”_

He's sitting in a chashitsu, a room built for tea ceremonies that is floored with tatami mats. It has a low ceiling, a hearth built into the floor and an alcove for hanging scrolls and placing other decorative objects. There are separate entrances for hosts and guests, but he's the only one in the room.

“ _You're becoming older now. You should go out and play with the other boys.”_

He washes his hands and rinses his mouth. He cleanses each utensil – the bowl, the whisk and the tea scoop – with prescribed motions and places them in a particular order. His breath is steady.

“ _Listen, I saw you practice with the hand fan. You were dancing, weren't you?”_

As he presses the fine matcha powder through the sieve, he's careful not to use too much force. He pours steaming water into the bowl, holds it tightly with one hand and whisks the tea with the other. The motions of his hand are skillful.

“ _Boys shouldn't be dancing. They shouldn't be singing. What would the guests think if a man entered the room dressed as a Geisha?”_

He's sitting alone in the teahouse, looking at the bowl of frothy tea. In his mind, voices of his past re-echo.

 

* * *

Akaashi Keiji is an apprentice geisha. When the sun goes down, he sneaks into the okiya and becomes Akiko. Everyone would tell you that Akiko is the most beautiful. _She,_ or so they think, wears full white facial makeup, a black kimono and a Shimada-styled nihongami wig. Her obi is tied in the drum style. Akiko, the autumn child.

One of the nights that Akaashi was playing the shamisen, a three-stringed instrument, a young guest walked in. He was tall and with his piercing hazel eyes, he examined the room. Akaashi wanted to talk to this odd fellow with the stuck-up greyish hair. He had a peculiar appearance that was intriguing.

Akaashi passed the shamisen to another geisha and walked towards the guest. “May I take your jacket?” Akaashi/Akiko asked the young man.

“Yeah, sure. Thanks,” the guests answered. Obviously, he had never been to the tea house before. He didn't seem nervous, he seemed interested as he looked around the place.

“You see, I'm the fisher from the market. They told me the geisha house needs 45 mackerel by the end of the week but the thing is, I can't bring them down here all by myself. You gotta send someone to my stand to pick 'em up,” he explained.

“Ah, I see. Thank you for notifying us.”

Akaashi knew the man was interested in leaving but he wanted to enjoy the guest's company a little longer. “May I offer you some tea on the house as a token of our appreciation?” Akaashi asked. He knew he'd have to pay himself if he treated guests – which he had never done before.

“I suppose it's rude to refuse so I might as well stay for a while,” the guest answered.

Just like he had practiced many times, Akaashi prepared some thin matcha tea for the young fisher. As he whisked, he looked up. “May I know your name?” he asked.

“Bokuto Koutarou. Nice to meet you.”

The name seemed just as odd as the owner, Akaashi thought. “As in … Horned Owl?” The Geisha asked. Bokuto nodded.

Akaashi covered his mouth with the sleeve of his kimono to chuckle. “Horned Owl? Truly, a fitting name for you. Yes, I can see it.” He subtly pointed at Bokuto's head with the whisk in his hand. With his hair arranged like that, he truly looked like a _horned owl_.

“Well, who knows, maybe the name made me this way. I don't care much about owls tho, I work with fishes. You could say I'm the best fisher in town!” Bokuto replied. Apparently, he was very enthusiastic about his job. He sipped from the tea.  
“Compliments on the tea.”

“You like it?”

“I think you prepared it well but I don't really like matcha. It's leafy and bitter. I feel like it tastes like grass,” Bokuto answered.

Akaashi was taken aback by Bokuto's honesty. Or maybe this guy was just too careless for his own good.

“Anyway, what's _your_ name?”

The corners of Akaashi's mouth twitched unnoticeably. “My geimei is Akiko.”

“As in … Your artistic name? It's true, isn't it ... Geishas don't use their real names?” Bokuto was fascinated by this new form of life he had stumbled upon in the flower town district.

Patiently, Akaashi explained that when a girl becomes an apprentice geisha, she takes a professional name to symbolize her new life. These names could be flamboyant, describing the bearer's beauty, youth or appeal. Not only do they reflect the grandeur of the separate reality in which the geishas exist, but also the uncertainty of a life based on cutting-edge fashion and the raw limits of society. When Bokuto asked Akaashi why he chose the name “Akiko”, the autumn child, a drop of sweat ran down his neck.

“In autumn, all things come to an end. The moment I became an apprentice of the fine arts of the flower and willow world, my old life too ended. The autumn has a high symbolic value.”

Bokuto frowned, he had a hard time keeping up with Akaashi's intellectualism. “Look, I don't understand these things. I'm wondering, if you left your old life behind, why choose a name that is a constant reminder of something that's no longer a part of you? To me, it sounds like … Like you're clinging to something,” Bokuto remarked as he drank from his tea. When he looked up, he looked straight into Akaashi's eyes. It was as if the eyes of the young fisher penetrated Akiko's facade and beheld Akaashi's naked soul. “Something that you're not ready to let go,” Bokuto finished his response.

Akaashi had a bitter taste in his mouth. Desperately, he tried to change the subject. The atmosphere was burdened with the secrets of two strangers whose worlds had begun to collide. Eventually, Bokuto decided it was time to make tracks home. Akaashi saw him off.

“It's not like I haven't noticed. Maybe you just didn't make an effort to hide it. Anyways, what you do here … I don't think there's anything wrong with it, Akiko. Do you understand?”

Akaashi's face was inscrutable as he nodded. Right before leaving, Bokuto extended his hand. Akaashi froze, only to find the young man adjusting the geisha's hairpin that had been sparkling in the light of the dim candles all night.

“You need to let it go, autumn child. Whatever it is that has been holding you back,” Bokuto said and turned around to leave.

“Bokuto-san.”

“Yes?”

“Do not forget your jacket.”

 

* * *

 

It was the early hours of the morning. As the rest of the world slept, Bokuto fired up the engine and let the ropes go from the quay. Passing the pier head, his fellow fishermen stowed the ropes, checked the gear one last time and slipped into the darkness to start another day's work.

As they say on land, the early bird catches the worm.

“There's method to this early morning madness. You oughta shoot the nets before dawn,” Iwaizumi said.

“We've been steaming for two hours, the new spot is too far away. This is no good,” Kuroo answered. “Now that Daichi's down with the flu, we're short on manpower.”

Iwaizumi shook his head.  “We can't fish without a bit of tide in the water, Kuroo. You need a strong current flowing and if you need a strong current you need to steam out.”

“The fish won't come crawling to your feet,” another crew member, Matsukawa, said.

With a look of irritation on his face, Kuroo was ready to make a snarky comment but something else caught his attention. “Mattsun, ain't you wearing Makki's shirt?”

Matsukawa inspected the shirt he was wearing. At the same moment, Hanamaki came out of the deckhouse. He was surprised to find everyone staring at him.

“What's up?”

“Makki, I'm wearing your shirt.”

Hanamaki raised his eyebrows and looked at Matsukawa's shirt. Then, he looked at his own shirt.

“Yeah.”

“Hm, yeah,” Mattsun repeated.

“Same size,” Makki said.

“Yeah, same size.”

The others, meanwhile, decided to mind their own business. No one said anything about why Matsukawa was wearing Hanamaki's shirt or why Hanamaki was wearing Matsukawa's shirt. Sometimes, men don't talk about things.

Light started to come into the sky by the East. The men shot the nets into the water. The gulls that had been following them from the shore were excited.

“I can't stand those gulls,” Terushima said more to himself than to anyone else. Kuroo was quick to react.

“Tell us, Terushima, why can't you stand gulls. What have gulls ever done to you, huh?” Kuroo was amused.

“Knock it off, you bastard.”

“Could it be because of that one time?” Kuroo kept pushing. Meanwhile everyone else on deck was laughing.

“That's not funny!”

“You know, that one time. When the gull decided to send you a package? Fell right on your head, remember?”

“Kuroo, I'ma make you wish you were dead.”

The mellow morning was filled with the spirit of joyous sailors. The only one who didn't feel like joining in on the fun was Bokuto. His body was on the ship but his mind was somewhere far away, daydreaming about last night's encounter. Last night, Bokuto had stepped into a new world that belonged to someone else. What was it that had caught his attention beneath all that flattering satin and heavy masquerade?

They towed for about four hours. A four-man crew consisting of Iwaizumi, Hanamaki, Lev and Aone took the watch, whilst the rest of the crew headed below to catch a few hours’ sleep before they hauled the nets. As soon as Bokuto's head touched the pillow it seemed he was woken again and it was time to haul. They all had a cuppa, then put on their oilskins and hauled the nets.

“Alright, let's see if our hunting instincts are correct today!”

They retrieved the nets to the boat and left them at the stern. The catch was satisfying, all the steaming was paying off to everyone's delight. They had to chill the catch immediately after gutting the fishes. The men shot the gears again. The trip lasted roughly 36 hours, they repeated the whole process another five times, then laid the land.

As they reached shore, a storm was coming up.

“We've been spared,” Kuroo said.

The men unloaded the iced boxes of their haul, the rubbish that they had trawled, and some debris from the old wrecks that had sunk during the Second World War. They all felt the same anguish as they stared at the scattered fragments of the same destroyed battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy that once carried brave seamen.

“They could have been our grandfathers,” Bokuto said.

“Maybe that's the thing with war. The repercussions will always echo,” Iwaizumi answered.

 

* * *

 

That afternoon, Bokuto was selling the fresh haul at their stand at the market. The fishes had that fresh-from-the-sea look to them that Bokuto was very proud of. It had been raining ever since they landed the ship. The downpour accumulated on the roof and poured down along the pillars of the stall.

A young man entered the booth, closing his umbrella behind him. His black hair was short and curly. He was slender, his coat was hanging loosely from his shoulders. Bokuto couldn't recognize the color of his eyes, it was something between black and dark blue. The boy hesitated before greeting him. He spoke under his breath which seemed very strange. After a moment of awkward silence, Bokuto couldn't bear it anymore.

“Listen pretty boy, you either buy some or let it be. Let me tell you, my fish is the best you'll find in this town!”

“I've been sent by the okiya on the other side of the town, across the river. I'm here to pick up the mackerel.”

Bokuto beamed. “'S that so?” He went to the back of the booth, only to come back with a big red box tucked under his toned arms. Bokuto had a vigorously robust, muscular physique.

“These are iced. You better make it back fast or the fish will go bad. Make sure you watch your step while crossing the bridge, the road is bumpy.”

The young man laughed. It was a serene, bright sound. “I will watch my step,” he said. Suddenly, Bokuto ran dry. He had been so blind but at last the penny has dropped. He had recognized Akaashi. “You … ! Hey boy, could it be?” – He leaned over to the person standing in front of him – “Are you _that_ person?”

Akaashi acted fast. He tore the box out of Bokuto's hand and leaped into the night. “Wait!” Bokuto shouted but the man was gone, he had disappeared in the crowd of people at the market. When Bokuto returned to the booth, he noticed the wet umbrella that had been tossed aside carelessly. He picked it up and inspected it. There wasn't much to the old thing, it might as well have been garbage. Bokuto placed it aside carefully, setting his mind on returning it to its owner.

 

Akaashi ran. The rain was running down his neck, crawling under the collar of his shirt and sneaking into his shoes. His black pants were sticking to his legs. He kept running even after he was out of breath. By the time he reached the okiya, he was trembling from the cold. Through the back door, he brought the mackerel into the kitchen and handed it to the first person he found.

“Boy, you're dripping wet! Young people can become so careless. Go get changed before you catch a cold,” the chef told him in passing.

“Yes,” Akaashi said politely and left the kitchen.

The okiya next to the teahouse was home to the proprietress, the geishas, apprentices and service staff. No men were allowed to enter the home of the geishas and neither was Akaashi. He lived in a shack only several steps away from the geisha house. During the day, Akaashi was the errand boy of the okiya. He delivered letters and goods, went to the market on demand and took care of any requests from the Okasan, the owner of the geisha house. She was a wise woman with a slender, sharp face and a matching physique. Her hands were lined with experience. She closed her eyes as if the burden of tradition lasted on her shoulders.

In his shack, Akaashi stripped from the wet clothes. He had left the shoji door half-open to listen to the sound of the rain. The wind carried the singing voices of the geishas to his ears. Buttoning his shirt, he looked out of the frame of wood which held together the bamboo lattice. The leaves bent under the pressure of the raindrops, only to bob up a moment later. The wet pedestrian way reflected the dim light of the lanterns that bordered the edge of the tilted roof of Akaashi's shack. As he watched the fog descend upon the scenery, thoughts of Bokuto crossed his mind. Akaashi sighed. He was surprised by the melancholy of his own audible discomfort. Ever since last night, he had wondered how Bokuto had figured out his secret.

_I don't think there's anything wrong with it, Akiko. Do you understand?_

His legs yielded, giving way under the pressure of his body until he was crouching with his arms wrapped around his stomach. He was feeling sick.

_You need to let it go, autumn child. Whatever it is that has been holding you back._

Akaashi rested his head on his knees. He felt nauseated.

Eventually, when Akaashi was ready to leave for the teahouse, his umbrella couldn't be found.

 

* * *

 

Late in the morning, the sun was shining bright. The trees were dipping from last night's downpour, the town was ablaze with lights reflected by raindrops. Bokuto was walking down a narrow path. The handrail leading along the rocky creek crossing – the only joint between Bokuto's crib and the market – was covered by the morning dew and was slippery under his hands.

In his right hand, Bokuto held a cane, nothing more than a walking stick he had found on his way. His left hand gripped the handle of the old black umbrella that seemed to be the most interesting object in Bokuto's possession ever since last night. Bokuto rested the tip of the umbrella on his shoulder like a bat, mimicking his favorite baseball player Murakami Masanori.

By the time he reached the market, Kuroo, Terushima, and Tanaka were sitting in front of the booth, each holding a cigarette.

“'Hoy.” Kuroo said when he saw Bokuto.

“Ahoy. Y'all smell like shit,” Bokuto replied and came to a halt, leaning on his cane.

“Nah,” Tanaka said, “'t's the smell of a man.”

Bokuto grimaced. Not all men reeked of old towels and burnt-out cigarettes.

Terushima leaned back and supported his upper body on his arms, looking up at the sky. He spoke with his cigarette between his lips, “I could sit here forever.”

In that moment, Iwaizumi popped his head out of the booth, holding some entangled fishing gears in his hands.

“Which one of you sluggish savages,” Iwaizumi said irritatedly, “dumped the equipment in a wet bucket? It's all knotted up.”

Tanaka wiped his nose, shrugging in response. “We ain't snitching, Iwai. Maybe it was the Holy Ghost.”

“Holy Ghost, my ass. Y'all sons of leapin'–“

Iwai interrupted himself, not engaging in any more foul language. With each passing day Daichi was sick, his cursing intensified significantly. He tossed the gears in front the fellow crew members.

“Equipment doesn't grow on trees, assholes. Get these untangled. If someone rips a cord I'm using your ass as shark bait.”

Everyone knew who the culprit was. This wasn't the first time he had engaged in such criminal activities and his crew members sought justice.

Kuroo flicked his cigarette. “Good luck with that,” he said as he stood up, wiping his hand on his pants.

“Don't rip the cords,” Tanaka said and got up as well.

Kuroo, Bokuto and Tanaka went inside. As Tanaka began to rig up the bench, Kuroo came to a halt.

“Ain't rainin'.”

“Huh?”

“I said,” Kuroo repeated, “it ain't raining.”

Bokuto scratched his head. Ah, the umbrella. “Someone left it at the booth last night. Thought they might come pick it up.”

Kuroo made a face that just as well might have said, ' _That tattered piece of trash? The owner's probably glad to have gotten rid of it_.'

Bokuto sighed. Carefully, he leaned the umbrella against one of the tables of the booth. He knew that after work, he'd hit the road for the teahouse. The umbrella, well, it was a triviality. It hid a much greater purpose. Bokuto had set his mind on meeting the man again who, a day ago, had rushed into the night and disappeared in a sea of unfamiliar faces.

Iwaizumi turned on a small, old radio that had been standing in the corner of the booth. The men began to work like well-oiled machines.

“ _Hello, there! Thanks for coming along for my performance. Now, when it comes to favorite hobbies, if you ask ten people, you'll get ten different answers. Just like everyone has their favorite food, too. Right?”_

“Damn right,” Tanaka whispered to himself as he was gutting some fresh haul, listening to the man on the radio.

“Ah, is he performing 'Nozarashi' again?”

“Hmm-mhm.”

“ _As you can see, they're all different. Favorite hobbies are the same way. As you know, there's a hobby known as fishing. When you're angling from the shore, the other amateur fishermen gather around to watch. Carrying their load on their shoulder, staring at the bob, their own heads bobbing up and down the same way._

_'Hey, boy, he stole your bait!'_

_'Can't you tie it any tighter?'_

_'Hey, pull to the right! To the right!'_

_'Boy, this place is crowded.'_

_'Shut up … What do you care?'”_

Listening to some classic rakugo on the radio, the men laughed along the tales of struggling fishermen like themselves.

 

* * *

 

Akaashi woke up to the gardener tapping on a slate attached to the outside of his shack. As he sat up, he threw on a shirt and turned around to look at the time.

“Akaashi-kun?” the gardener asked from outside.

“On my way!”

Akaashi slid open the shoji door. The harsh light of the morning sun glared. The gardener, holding a spade in his hand, smiled at Akaashi.

“Good morning. Sorry to wake you up but there's someone who's been asking for you.”

“Asking for me?”

“Ah, yes. Some clean-limbed fellow with eccentric grey hair. Odd guy, if you ask me. Akaashi, don't tell me you're involved in some illega– “

“Thank you, Takeda-san,” Akaashi said as he left.

The teahouse had a small garden with a path leading to it. Along the path waited a bench and a privy for guests. There was an outer garden with a gate and a covered arbor. Through the gate, an inner garden followed that connected to the teahouse itself. The path was kept moist and green, reminding of remote mountain paths, free of bright flowers that might have distracted from the sight.

Calmly, Bokuto was leaning against the bench, sitting up straight and confident with his legs crossed at the ankles. Next to him, Akaashi's umbrella rested against the bench.

“Don't tell me you came all the way down here to return an umbrella,” Akaashi said to catch his attention.

“I came all the way to see the owner of the umbrella,” Bokuto replied shamelessly with a little smirk tagged to the corners of his mouth.

Akaashi took the umbrella and sat down next to Bokuto with a gap forming between them. For a while, they didn't say anything. While Akaashi fiddled with his fingers, Bokuto watched the clouds.

“Sun's shining.”

“Yes.”

“Ah, by the way” – Bokuto grabbed a lunch box wrapped in some cloth and handed it to Akaashi – “I brought you some rice balls. Some old lady refused to pay the fish with anything else but a whole sheet of onigiri. They're good.”

Akaashi's stomach grumbled, he hadn't eaten anything all morning. At the obnoxious sound of his owl stomach growling, he blushed. Bokuto laughed.

“Thank you.”

Akaashi was about to unwrap the lunch box but he hesitated.

“Bokuto-san, if you are not busy, I'd like to ask you to come inside. It leaves a bad impression if we're eating in front of the teahouse.”

Slowly, Bokuto came to the conclusion that to Akaashi, the tea house was sacred.

“Not at all. Actually, the thing is,” Bokuto said enthusiastically, “I'm starving!”

As they walked down the narrow path, Takeda stared at Bokuto. “Youngsters and fashion these days,” he whispered under his breath as he chopped off dead twigs.

Bokuto was ready to turn into the teahouse, but Akaashi stopped him by placing his hand on the fisherman's shoulder. He pointed in the other direction.

“This way, Bokuto-san.”

They sat down on the narrow veranda of the shack. As Akaashi unwrapped the rice balls, Bokuto pulled some leaves, scattering them on the lawn. They each reached out for an onigiri. No one said anything when their fingers brushed. Quietly, the men ate.

“You know,” Bokuto broke the silence, “you didn't have to rush off like that.”

“I panicked.”

“Because you felt exposed?”

“No. Because I felt naked.”

What at first seemed absurd to Bokuto eventually made sense. Without his makeup, the wig and the kimono, how did Akaashi feel? Between Akaashi and Akiko, which one was real? Bokuto felt like there was a lot he didn't understand about Akaashi's life.

After they had eaten, Akaashi wrapped the empty lunch box back in the cloth, placing it on the small table in the middle of the tatatmi mats. Meanwhile, Bokuto was examining the empty room, wondering why there was so little for the eyes to behold.

“Bokuto-san, how did you figure?”

Bokuto took his time replying, “I guess I just put one and one together.” Bokuto was fidgeting with the radio until finally, the sound of the shamisen being played on air filled the room.

“Do many people know?” Bokuto asked back.

“Just a few. And you,” Akaashi said while opening the shoji door, letting in fresh air.

“Well I suppose that makes me special.”

“...”

“Don't worry. Your secret's safe with me. There's a lot about what you do that I don't understand. The only thing I know is that night, you were beautiful. Not just pretty, it wasn't the wig or the cherry lips. The way you moved, the way you talked – You cast a spell over anyone who looks at you. All I know is, what you do is what you should be doing, because it feels right. Something like that couldn't possibly be wrong,” Bokuto said while running his finger along the kanji of a spread out scroll at the wall. The shamisen filled the silence with soothing sounds.

Akaashi had become silent, not a single noise had escaped him since Bokuto had begun to talk. Bokuto noticed the framed picture of a woman. Her skin was fair, contrasting the black locks that adorned her face. He took the picture in his hand.

“Is this your mother?”

“Yes.”

“She's beautiful.”

“Yes,” Akaashi said, unable to suppress the bitter undertone of his voice.

Before Bokuto could ask what's wrong, he was cut off by Akaashi.

 

“Bokuto-san.”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Would you like to know what happened that autumn?”

 


End file.
